Think.Eat.Save. Student Challenge And Writing Competition

Calling all food waste warriors in high schools and universities worldwide – fight food waste and compete for thousands of dollars of prizes! Your challenge: uncover how much food gets wasted in your schools, organize a team and take action to reduce food waste!

It’s been a while now since we started telling you about the outrageous amount of food that is wasted or lost across the world. We don’t want to be annoying but some things need to be said and repeated: ONE THIRD of all the food produced worldwide is WASTED.

Check out your pantry or your fridge and imagine just throwing away one third of all the food that is in there. Imagine throwing away one third of the food in your shopping cart after paying for it. Or picture all those lunch trays at your school and imagine one third of them being WASTED.

Hard to believe, huh? But it is a fact. A shocking one, we know. Food waste is a massive global problem that has negative humanitarian, environmental and financial implications and schools are a huge part of this story. In England, schools throw out some 123,000 tonnes of food a year, costing around £250 million a year. If you’re an American student, you are responsible for 67 pounds of discarded lunch waste every school year. On campuses in Los Angeles – unified, the second-largest school system in the US -, students throw out at least $100,000 worth of food a day.

The solution is in our hands. With a few simple changes to our habits, we can significantly shift this paradigm. More than that, we can pass this idea forward and create a movement of students tackling food wastes in their schools and universities.

Theme

Think.Eat.Save.

Organizer

Think.Eat.Save

Prizes

1st Prize – US $5,000

2nd Prize – US $3,000

3rd Prize – US $2,000

Deadline

16 November, 2014, 11:59pm +3 GMT

Guidelines

Three winning projects will be selected based on:

#1: Creativity – what new ideas and approaches were employed by the students in addressing the issue of food waste (30%)

#2: Effectiveness – what results were accomplished e.g. how much food waste was reduced or what measures were adopted by the school to reduce food waste, and what plans are there to ensure the longevity of these reductions/new ideas (40%)

#3: Reach – what was the level of interest and support generated; how many students participated in the activities? Were teachers, cafeteria staff, parents and families actively engaged? How much social media engagement was employed (30%)

This competition is open to all students at the secondary and university levels from any school worldwide.

To participate, students must undertake an activity or a project that will addressany of the following:

# Assess the level of food waste that is generated by the school and identify/understand the causes of this.

# Generate an idea or ideas for eliminating or reducing food waste in their schools (for example, better planning, preparation, storage, consumption of the food in their cafeterias; recycling or redistribution of left-overs; etc.) and undertaking a project to implement at least one of these.

# Raise awareness in their schools or communities on the issue of food waste and why it should be reduced and eventually eliminated.

This Challenge is open to individuals and teams. For team entries, there is no minimum or maximum number of team members required. A representative or leader should be designated in the case of team entries.

When the project is completed, entrants can then come back to their account on the website to report on their accomplishments. We would need to have a brief description of what the project was all about, its objectives and its results.

Supporting photos should be posted on the entrants’ own Instagram, Twitter or Facebook accounts using the hashtag #ThinkEatSave.

The Social Media accounts should be made public for ease of promotion.

Videos with a maximum length of 3 minutes can be posted on the entrants’ Youtube channel. The video is not expected to be professionally produced but can be done using handheld/mobile devices and edited by the students themselves.

Participants are encouraged to create fun internet memes to promote their projects.

Links to the Instagram photos, Facebook photo albums and/or Youtube video should then be shared in the report.

Entries can be submitted in any of the six UN official languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

The winners will be announced on www.thinkeatsave.orgon 15 December 2014. Winners will also receive an email notification from UNEP.